50 Notable alumni of
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Updated:
The Cranbrook Academy of Art is 918th in the world, 338th in North America, and 316th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 50 notable alumni from the Cranbrook Academy of Art sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Selma Blair
- Occupations
- television actorvoice actorfilm actoractor
- Biography
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Selma Blair is an American actress. She is known for her roles in Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde, The Sweetest Thing, and the Hellboy franchise.
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Mitt Romney
- Occupations
- non-fiction writerbusinesspersoninternational forum participantMormon missionarypolitician
- Biography
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Willard Mitt Romney is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Utah since 2019. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and was the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2012 election, losing to Barack Obama.
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Renée Elise Goldsberry
- Occupations
- film actortelevision actoractorsingerstage actor
- Biography
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Renée Elise Goldsberry is an American actress and singer known for originating the role of Angelica Schuyler in the Broadway musical Hamilton, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Her other Broadway credits include Nettie Harris in the original Broadway cast of The Color Purple, and Mimi Marquez in Rent. She has portrayed many roles on television, including Geneva Pine on The Good Wife, and Evangeline Williamson on One Life to Live, for which she received two Daytime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. As of 2021, she stars in the Peacock musical comedy Girls5eva. Also that year, she received a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role in a Limited Series or Movie for her performance in the Disney+ live stage recording of Hamilton, which was released in 2020.
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Daniel Ellsberg
- Occupations
- writercareer soldierpolitical activistintelligence analystmilitary officer
- Biography
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Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
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Alexi Lalas
- Occupations
- association football playermusician
- Biography
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Panayotis Alexander Lalas is an American retired soccer player who played mostly as a defender. Lalas is best known for his participation with the United States men's national soccer team in the 1994 FIFA World Cup, where his appearance made him a standout player on the team with his distinctive long beard and hair. After the World Cup, Lalas went on to become the first American in Italy's Serie A as a member of Calcio Padova.
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William Talman
- Occupations
- television actorstage actorscreenwriterfilm actoractor
- Biography
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William Whitney Talman Jr. was an American television and movie actor, best known for playing Los Angeles District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the television series Perry Mason.
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Ann Romney
- Occupations
- politicianhomemaker
- Biography
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Ann Lois Romney is an American author and philanthropist. She is the wife of businessman and politician, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. From 2003 to 2007, Romney was First Lady of Massachusetts, while her husband served as governor.
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Bob Woodruff
- Occupations
- journalistwar correspondent
- Biography
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Robert Warren Woodruff is an American television journalist. Since 1996, he has served as a reporter for ABC News. Woodruff co-anchored ABC World News Tonight in 2006 with journalist Elizabeth Vargas. He was severely injured by an IED explosion during a reporting trip to Iraq that January, and he recovered over an extended period before returning to air.
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Bill Prady
- Occupations
- film producerscreenwritertelevision producer
- Biography
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William Scott Prady is an American television writer and producer who has worked on American sitcoms and variety programs, including Married... with Children, Dream On, Star Trek: Voyager, Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men and Gilmore Girls and is the co-creator of The Big Bang Theory and The Muppets.
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Alan Simpson
- Occupations
- politicianlawyer
- Biography
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Alan Kooi Simpson is an American politician and member of the Republican Party, who represented Wyoming in the United States Senate between 1979 and 1997. Simpson was the Republican whip in the U.S. Senate from 1985 to 1995, as majority whip from 1985 to 1987 and minority whip from 1987 to 1995. He also served as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Democratic Party co-chair Erskine Bowles of North Carolina.
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Fumihiko Maki
- Occupations
- architectuniversity teacheropinion journalistteacher
- Biography
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Fumihiko Maki is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
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Scott McNealy
- Occupations
- businesspersoncomputer scientist
- Biography
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Scott McNealy is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun, McNealy founded Curriki, a free online education service. In 2011, he co-founded Wayin, a social intelligence and visualization company based in Denver. McNealy stepped down from his position as CEO of Wayin in 2016.
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Duane Hanson
- Occupations
- sculptorinstallation artistpainterphotographer
- Biography
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Duane Hanson was an American artist and sculptor born in Minnesota. He spent most of his career in South Florida. He was known for his life-sized realistic sculptures of people. He cast the works based on human models in various materials, including polyester resin, fiberglass, Bondo, and bronze. Hanson's works are in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Smithsonian.
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Thomas McGuane
- Occupations
- writerfilm directornovelistscreenwriterautobiographer
- Biography
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Thomas Francis McGuane III is an American writer. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Cutting Horse Association Members Hall of Fame and the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. McGuane's papers, manuscripts, and correspondence are located in the Montana State University Archives and Special Collections and are available for research use. In 2023, he was given the first Award for Excellence in Service to the MSU Library for the advancement of scholarship and access to unique materials.
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Edmund White
- Occupations
- biographeruniversity teacherjournalistliterary criticplaywright
- Biography
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Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
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Pete Dawkins
- Occupations
- player of American footballpolitician
- Biography
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Peter Miller Dawkins is an American business executive and former college football player, hockey player, military officer, and political candidate. Dawkins attended the United States Military Academy, where he played as a halfback for the Army Cadets football team from 1956 to 1958. As a senior in 1958 he won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, and was named as a consensus All-America. After graduating from the Military Academy in 1959, he studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Dawkins served as an officer in the United States Army until he retired in 1983 with the rank of brigadier general. He received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Bernard W. Rogers, USA in 1983. He was a Republican candidate for United States Senate in 1988. Dawkins has held executive positions with Lehman Brothers, Bain & Company, Primerica, and Citigroup.
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Natalie Zemon Davis
- Occupations
- historianwriteruniversity teacherscreenwriterwomen's rights activist
- Biography
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Natalie Zemon Davis, was an American-Canadian historian of the early modern period. She was the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University. Her work originally focused on France, but it later broadened to include other parts of Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. For example, her book, Trickster Travels (2006), views Italy, Spain, Morocco and other parts of North Africa and West Africa through the lens of Leo Africanus's pioneering geography. (By 2023, the text had appeared in six translations.) Davis' books have all been translated into other languages: twenty-two for The Return of Martin Guerre. She was the second female president of the American Historical Association (the first, Nellie Neilson, was in 1943).
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Harry Bertoia
- Occupations
- sculptorprintmakerartistjewelry designermusician
- Biography
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Harry Bertoia was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer.
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David Trott
- Occupations
- politicianbusiness executivelawyer
- Biography
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David Alan Trott is an American attorney and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 11th congressional district from 2015 to 2019. He is a member of the Republican Party.
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Gyo Obata
- Occupations
- architect
- Biography
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Gyo Obata was an American architect, the son of painter Chiura Obata and his wife, Haruko Obata, a floral designer. In 1955, he co-founded the global architectural firm HOK (formerly Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum). He lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and still worked in HOK's St. Louis office. He designed several notable buildings, including the McDonnell Planetarium and GROW Pavilion at the Saint Louis Science Center, the Independence Temple of the Community of Christ church, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
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Michael Barone
- Occupations
- journalist
- Biography
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Michael D. Barone is an American conservative political analyst, historian, pundit and journalist. He is best known as the principal author of The Almanac of American Politics, a highly detailed reference work on Congress and state politics; it has been published biennially by National Journal since 1972. The Almanac has been called "definitive and essential for anyone writing seriously about campaigns and Congress." Barone is also a regular commentator on United States elections and political trends for the Fox News Channel. In April 2009, Barone joined the Washington Examiner, leaving his position of 18 years at U.S. News & World Report. He is based at the American Enterprise Institute as a resident fellow. He has written several books on American political and demographic history.
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Bing Gordon
- Years
- 1950-.. (age 74)
- Occupations
- engineer
- Biography
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William "Bing" Gordon is a video game executive and technology venture capitalist. He served ten years as Chief Creative Officer of video game publisher and developer Electronic Arts prior to his current partnership with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). He was a founding director of Audible.com and has served on several high-profile Boards of Directors including Amazon, Ngmoco, Duolingo, and Zynga. He designed the video games Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Sid Meier's SimGolf and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth.
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Patrick Brown
- Occupations
- ice hockey player
- Biography
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Patrick Wellington Brown is an American professional ice hockey forward for the Providence Bruins in the American Hockey League (AHL) while under contract to the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League (NHL).
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Nick Cave
- Occupations
- costume designerwriterfashion designerartistsound artist
- Biography
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Nick Cave is an American sculptor, dancer, performance artist, and professor. He is best known for his Soundsuit series: wearable assemblage fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly, often made with found objects. He also trained as a dancer with Alvin Ailey and often incorporates dance and performance into his works. His later sculptures have focused on color theory and included mixed media and large-scale installations. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and directs the graduate fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continues to work on Soundsuits as well as works completed as a sculptor, dancer, and performance artist.
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Jack Lenor Larsen
- Occupations
- textile artistartistweavercollectortextile designer
- Biography
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Jack Lenor Larsen was an American textile designer, author, collector and promoter of traditional and contemporary craftsmanship. Through his career he was noted for bringing fabric patterns and textiles to go with modernist architecture and furnishings. Some of his works are part of permanent collections at prominent museums including Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Art Institute of Chicago,Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which has his most significant archive.
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Dan Dickerson
- Occupations
- sports commentator
- Biography
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Daniel Hill Dickerson is an American sportscaster, best known for his current position as the lead radio play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball's Detroit Tigers on the Detroit Tigers Radio Network.
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Olga de Amaral
- Enrolled in the Cranbrook Academy of Art
- Studied in 1954
- Occupations
- designerweavertextile artist
- Biography
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Olga de Amaral is a Colombian textile and visual artist known for her large-scale abstract works made with fibers and covered in gold and/or silver leaf. Because of her ability to reconcile local concerns with international developments, de Amaral became one of the few artists from South America to become internationally known for her work in fiber during the 1960s and ‘70s. She is also considered an important practitioner in the development of postwar Latin American Abstraction. She currently lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.
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Robbie Buhl
- Occupations
- racing automobile driver
- Biography
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Robbie Buhl is an American former race car driver who competed in the Indy Racing League. He was a color commentator for the IndyCar races on Versus. In 2016, Robbie, along with his brother Tom Buhl, started Buhl Sport Detroit, a motorsports marketing company, professional race team, and teen driving program based in Detroit, MI.
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Ivan Krstić
- Born in
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Croatia - Occupations
- engineer
- Biography
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Ivan Krstić is a Croatian computer security expert, currently working on core security at Apple Inc. Krstić was previously the director of security architecture at One Laptop per Child. He is a co-author of The Official Ubuntu Book.
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Anne Wilson
- Occupations
- artistinstallation artist
- Biography
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Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art (techniques such as stitching, crocheting, and knitting) to other media. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Ward Just
- Occupations
- novelistjournalistwriter
- Biography
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Ward Swift Just was an American writer. He was a war correspondent and the author of 19 novels and numerous short stories.
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Rob Edwards
- Occupations
- screenwriter
- Biography
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Rob Edwards is an American television and feature film screenwriter and producer. His writing includes the Disney animated feature films Treasure Planet and The Princess and the Frog, both of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2009, along with Ron Clements and John Musker, Edwards was awarded the Best Screenplay award from the African-American Film Critics Association for The Princess and the Frog.
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Niels Diffrient
- Occupations
- businesspersonindustrial designerarchitect
- Biography
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Niels Diffrient was an American industrial designer. Diffrient focused mainly on ergonomic seating, and his most well known designs are the Freedom and Liberty chairs, manufactured by Humanscale.
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Sonya Clark
- Enrolled in the Cranbrook Academy of Art
- In 1995 graduated with Master of Fine Arts
- Occupations
- university teacherartist
- Biography
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Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.
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Frances Rich
- Occupations
- sculptorstage actorfilm actoractor
- Biography
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Frances Rich was an American actress, artist, and sculptor. She was the daughter of actress Irene Rich.
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Charles Pachter
- Occupations
- sculptorpainter
- Biography
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Charles Pachter is a Canadian contemporary artist. He is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, designer, historian, and lecturer. He studied French literature at the Sorbonne, art history at the University of Toronto, and painting and graphics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He holds honorary doctorates from Brock University, the Ontario College of Art & Design and the University of Toronto (2010). He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1999, and promoted to Officer in 2011.
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Walter Hamady
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Walter Samuel Haatoum Hamady was an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking. In the mid-1960s, he founded The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, and soon after joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for more than thirty years.
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Elliott Earls
- Years
- 1966-.. (age 58)
- Occupations
- sculptorgraphic designer
- Biography
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Elliott Peter Earls is an American graphic designer, artist and one man band performance artist. He is an artist-in-residence and head of the graduate graphic design department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
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Bruce D. Smith
- Occupations
- archaeologistanthropologistcurator
- Biography
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Bruce D. Smith is an American archaeologist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History who primarily focuses on the interaction of humans with their environment, especially the origins of agriculture in eastern North America agricultural complex.
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Carol Wald
- Years
- 1935-2001 (aged 66)
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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Carol S. Wald was an American artist who was also widely known for her talents as an illustrator. Her collages and paintings appeared in Time, Fortune, and Ms, and on the covers of Business Week, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Saturday Review.
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Howard Kottler
- Occupations
- ceramicist
- Biography
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Howard William Kottler was an American ceramist, conceptual artist, and professor of ceramics at the University of Washington, credited as a seminal force in redefining the direction of contemporary American ceramic art.
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Alice Kagawa Parrott
- Occupations
- artistceramicist
- Biography
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Alice Kagawa Parrott was a Japanese American fiber artist and ceramicist. She spent most of her adult life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she established a reputation as one of the country's most important weavers, and opened one of Santa Fe's first shops devoted weaving and crafts.
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James C. Harrison
- Occupations
- artist
- Biography
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James C. Harrison was a Detroit, Michigan artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His work is complex, layered and full of Jungian, religious and mystical references used to relay his internal battles and demons. Harrison drew inspiration from mythology, psychiatry, poetry, music, philosophy and artists of the past. His ever-evolving style - often equated to Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg and other contemporaries - always maintained a cutting-edge quality that was anchored in his own deep philosophical tendencies.
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Blane De St. Croix
- Born in
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United States - Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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Blane De St. Croix is an artist best known for his monumental landscape sculptures and installations.
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John Beardman
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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John Beardman is a contemporary American artist. He is an abstract expressionist and a major contributor to “art as process” and "action painting" influenced by Willem de Kooning. His work has been the subject of several exhibitions in New York City, Louisville, Kentucky, Birmingham, Michigan, and Nova Scotia, Canada. Beardman has received numerous creative artist's grants and fellowships. He currently lives and works in Pennsylvania and has a Studio in Manhattan, New York City.
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Lycia Trouton
- Occupations
- installation artist
- Biography
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Lycia Danielle Trouton is a Canadian artist.
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David Rowland
- Occupations
- military personneldesignerfurniture makerscientist
- Biography
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David Lincoln Rowland was an American industrial designer noted for inventing the 40/4 Chair. The chair was the first compactly stackable chair invented, and is able to stack 40 chairs 4 feet (120 cm) high.
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Karyn Olivier
- Born in
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Trinidad and Tobago - Occupations
- artistvisual artist
- Biography
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Karyn Olivier is a Philadelphia-based artist who creates public art, sculptures, installations and photography. Olivier alters familiar objects, spaces, and locations, often reinterpreting the role of monuments. Her work intersects histories and memories with present-day narratives.
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Beth Katleman
- Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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Beth Katleman is an American artist known for porcelain assemblage sculpture cast from found objects. Her allegorical installations fall within the genre of pop surrealism, combining decorative elements, such as Rococo embellishments and 19th century Toile de Jouy wallpaper scenery, with satirical references to consumer culture, fairy tales and classic literature. Katleman's work is in private and institutional collections and is exhibited internationally, including an installation commissioned by architect Peter Marino for Christian Dior, in the Hong Kong and London flagship boutiques. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is the recipient of the 2011 Moët Hennessey Prize, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant, the Watershed Generation X Award, a Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship and a residency in Cortona, Italy sponsored by the University of Georgia, Athens. Katleman holds a BA in English from Stanford University, an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and an MBA in Arts Management from UCLA.
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James Edmund Jeffries
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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James Edmund Jeffries was a U.S. Representative from Kansas from 1979 to 1983.
